Artworks

Murasaki Shikibu nikki emaki (Gotō scroll)

Artwork · Anonymous · 13th century · emakimono · Gotoh Museum

One of four surviving scrolls illustrating the diary of Murasaki Shikibu, now in several collections and covering only about fifteen per cent of the text; perhaps the set begun in 1233 by courtiers around the ex-emperor Go Horikawa, mentioned in Fujiwara no Teika’s diary. Two drunken courtiers try to get into her room one moonlit night, and she holds the shutters closed. The compositions follow the Heian Genji scrolls, but the figures express themselves directly and the tsukuri-e is applied with less care. 1 Mason 2005, p. 183, fig. 212. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.